'ALEPPO: HOW US & SAUDI-BACKED REBELS TARGET ‘EVERY SYRIAN’: WAR DIARY BY WESTERN JOURNALIST EVA BARTLETT ON THE TRUTH ABOUT ALEPPO': https://ingaza.wordpress.com/_________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

Eva Bartlett is an independent journalist from Canada. She has traveled to Syria six times to investigate human rights violations and terrorism against Syrians. What she has found, she says, is a truth completely opposite of what the Western media and governments claim.

During a United Nations press conference, Bartlett sharply criticized Western governments, particularly the United States, for their efforts to effect regime change in Syria. Contrary to the Western narrative, she said, the people of Syria do not want a regime change. During her extensive travels to and around the country she had talked to Syrians, in Arabic, who widely expressed support for President Bashar al-Assad, whose army is battling a number of Western-backed terrorist groups.

Bartlett was critical of Canada’s resolution, that was ultimately adopted, to end hostilities in Syria and particularly in Aleppo. She also pointed out that they called for a ceasefire only after Syrian and Russian forces liberated parts of Aleppo from terrorist factions, an act she called pointless.

“I want to remind people why these ceasefires are, indeed, pointless. The last ceasefire in September was, from the very start, negated by 20 main terrorist factions who declared they were not going to participate, and from the very beginning violated the ceasefire over 300 times during the duration of the ceasefire … while the Syrians, and while the Russians, adhered to the tenets of the ceasefire.”
Bartlett then alleged that U.S.-led coalitions, also, did not adhere to the ceasefire.

“The American-led coalition itself violated the ceasefire by targeting Syrian army positions in Deir ez-Zur, killing at least 83 Syrian soldiers in a prolonged attack that lasted nearly one hour, and which enabled ISIS to overtake that position. So, this is one reason why a ceasefire is pointless … There is no faith that any of the parties that the U.S. and Western leaders who have funded these terrorists, there’s no faith that they can actually… get them to adhere to a ceasefire.”
Eva Bartlett, peace workers and others begin to question Western narrative on Syria.
Aleppo, Dec. 15 [Image by SANA via AP]
Disputing Western Media Reports on Syria

On Wednesday, the Christian Science Monitor perpetuated the Western narrative that Syria and Russia are the bad guys who may seek revenge against Syrians should Assad regain control of his country.

However, this account, which is common in Western media and governments, directly conflicts with Bartlett’s description. Fluent in Arabic, Bartlett has learned from the people of Syria themselves that they want the Western-backed terrorists gone, and they want Assad to remain in power. Of the six times she has traveled to Syria, two were with international delegations and four were done independently, at her own risk. During these travels, she visited Aleppo four times.

“Whatever you hear in the corporate media is the complete opposite. And on that note, what you hear in the corporate media — and I will name them, BBC Guardian, New York Times, etc. — on Aleppo is also opposite of reality.”
Bartlett described how the Syrian Free Army, a rebel group, along Western-backed groups like Al-Nusra, denied the citizens of Aleppo food, water, and electricity for a prolonged period of time. She claimed those who attempted to escape were fired upon, not by Assad’s forces, but by U.S. and Western-backed opposition forces. Bartlett also noted that it was Syrian Army troops who shielded civilians from sniper fire as they fled.

On a November 29 entry on her blog, Bartlett extensively details atrocities the citizens of Aleppo have experienced: a 10-year-old boy shot in the head by a rebel sniper; a 14-year-old boy who lost both parents in separate terrorist attacks; a woman who lost her 26-year-old son, who was a doctor; a woman widowed after her husband was killed while parking a car.

Western sanctions prevent doctors from properly treating injured civilians, with a lack of medical equipment, crucial medicine, and few ambulances making their jobs all the more difficult.

Al-Razi hospital in Aleppo has been particularly hard-hit. The hospital went from having 68 working ambulances to just six. The hospital’s head of forensic medicine, Dr. Hajo, told Bartlett that of the 10,750 civilians killed, 40 percent were women and children over the course of Syria’s six-year war.

U.S. Peace Council

Bartlett’s statement on the U.S.-led and funded terror groups corresponds with the findings of the U.S. Peace Council. Last summer, it sent a delegation of peace workers to determine whether the Western media narrative on Syria was true. In September, members of the Council spoke at a UN event to discuss their findings. The Council’s president, Alfred Marden, had asked members of various peace groups to travel to Syria to discover what is happening. Some groups, he said, would not send a delegation for fear of traveling into an active war zone. Other groups, he said, believed the Western media narrative that Assad was engaging in a civil war against his own people and chose not to go.

The self-funded activists that traveled to the war-torn country were shocked by what they discovered. Henry Lowendorf, an executive member of the U.S. Peace Council went to Syria with the delegation. He visited Damascus and two nearby villages. There he interacted with locals, as Eva Bartlett has done. He also spoke with religious and government leaders to get a more holistic viewpoint. He, too, questioned Western intervention in Syria, particularly the United States.

“We saw for ourselves the damage that was done to the University. Even while we were there, a shell fell into the school of architecture, killing students and faculty… We saw… Christian villages that have been besieged by the terrorists but have now been liberated.”
Lowendorf said that people of different religions he and the delegation had spoken to had refused to be split up into factions. When a Muslim mufti was asked how many Muslim inhabited Syria, his response was 23 million, the total population of Syria. When they asked an Orthodox Bishop how many Christians inhabit Syria, the answer again, was 23 million. Lowendorf said that citizens were focused on unity, in direct opposition to Western interventionists.

“We will not allow ourselves to be divided up the way the United States has divided up the people of Iraq or Libya or Afghanistan.”
Eva Bartlett, peace workers and others begin to question Western narrative on Syria.
Syrian government evacuating residents of Aleppo. [Image by SANA via AP]
Tulsi Gabbard’s Bill Against Funding Terrorists

The cumulative criticism from the U.S. Peace Council, various independent journalists and Western peace activists have gotten the attention of Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, an active member of the Hawaii National Guard and Iraq veteran. On December 8, Gabbard introduced legislation called the Stop Arming Terrorists bill to prevent the government from funding known terrorist groups and mentioned the same groups Bartlett named in her speech.

“The CIA has also been funneling weapons and money through Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and others who provide direct and indirect support to groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda. This support has allowed al-Qaeda and their fellow terrorist organizations to establish strongholds throughout Syria, including in Aleppo.”
Gabbard said groups that the CIA is currently funding include Fursan al Haqq, the Levant Front — which the United States government has been providing intelligence to, ISIS, Nusra Front, and even al-Qaeda. Gabbard also references the U.S. Peace Council on her official website, lending more credence to Bartlett, other independent journalists and peace workers risking their lives in Syria who criticize Western media narratives.

Five people in Port Said allegedly making fake videos purporting to show the wreckage of air strikes in the Syrian city of Aleppo have been arrested, the Egyptian Interior Ministry has said.

The videographer, his assistants and the parents of two children who appear in the footage were detained after police managed to trail the would-be camera crew to a building site awaiting demolition, a statement on Monday said.

The team reportedly admitted they had planned to distribute their work on social media, pretending it showed scenes of the injured and destruction in Aleppo, the embattled northern Syrian city which has just fallen back under government control after four years of fighting between the regime and Sunni rebels.

It was not immediately clear what charges had been brought against the five. The Independent has contacted the Egyptian authorities for clarification.

In the distinctly amateur raw videos and stills released by the Interior Ministry, an eight-year-old girl wears a white dress and bandages covered in red stains, and holds a teddy bear. A 12-year-old boy is also interviewed about what life is like under intensive Russian-backed Syrian government air strikes.

The girl’s dress, covered in red paint, was what caught the attention of a police officer driving by, the ministry said.

A camera and six mobile phones were seized at the scene. The photographer is still being held while authorities go through the material, officials said, but the other four suspects were released on bail.

Syrian activists and White Helmets rescue workers, until recently trapped inside east Aleppo’s siege barricades, have frequently been accused by critics of faking harrowing footage of the aftermath of bombings and digging survivors from rubble that have frequently emerged from the war-torn city.

Many other videos and photos of incidents reportedly from Aleppo which circulate on social media are staged or filmed elsewhere, both the Syrian government and its allies say.

December 20 will go down in history as a memorable day to turn the tide of Syria’s conflict. Russia, Turkey and Iran adopted a declaration on the immediate steps to promote the settlement of the Syria’s crisis.

The three countries agreed to take on the role of guarantors to facilitate the process preserving the territorial integrity of Syria and spreading the cessation of hostilities to all parts of the country. Other states are welcome to join. The declaration is just a start, the efforts by the three parties will continue. The document was signed by the three countries’ foreign and defense chiefs at the December 20 meeting in Moscow.

Russia, Iran and Turkey will fight together Islamic State, Jabhat al-Nusra (Jabhat Fatah al-Sham) and other extremist groups. The parties are ready to mediate a deal between the Syrian government and opposition. They considered the proposal of Russian President to convene a meeting between the Syrian regime and opposition groups in the Kazakh capital of Astana, taking the crisis management process into their hands to achieve real results - something international efforts in other formats have failed to do.

Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev discussed the possibility of a meeting between the Syrian conflicting parties in Astana with the presidents of Russia and Turkey on December 17. It mirrors the understanding that a political solution can only be worked out in cooperation with the Syrian government. President Bashar al-Assad has consolidated his power despite US calls for him «to go».

Russia. Iran and Turkey are the leading pertinent actors who can really influence the events on the ground in Syria. The effort is undertaken after the hopes to reach an agreement with the US and the coalition it leads have been dashed. No result has been so far reached within the framework of UN-brokered International Syria Support Group.

The tripartite talks were held after Aleppo had been retaken from the militants to change the situation in the war-torn country. Russia, Iran and Turkey were parties to a ceasefire agreement there. The truce allowed to evacuate tens of thousands of civilians and the militants who have agreed to stop fighting and be transferred elsewhere. This successful initiative provides an impetus to enlarging the effort to other parts of Syria.

Russia and Turkey said the assassination of Moscow’s ambassador to Ankara, Andrei Karlov, will not affect their relationship as both countries face the common threat. During the December 20 meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the tragedy would «make all of us fight terrorism more decisively».

A team of Russian investigators has been sent to Turkey for taking part in a joint investigation into the shooting. The top Russian diplomat said his meeting with the Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu,, was now «all the more relevant.» Dmitry Peskov, Russian president’s spokesman, said the assassination would not harm the negotiation process in any way. «The answer to the murder of the Russian ambassador to Turkey must be strengthening the fight against terror», said Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The three parties joining together on Syria indicates a major shift in the balance of power with the US influence further declining. The US-led coalition has failed to make any significant gains during «strategic» offensives in Mosul and Raqqa against the background of quick and spectacular success of Russia-supported forces retaking Aleppo. The Aleppo victory greatly diminishes the US status as power broker.

The joint declaration reflects the progress achieved by Russia in developing cooperation with Ankara and Tehran. For instance, Turkey, a NATO member, is in talks with Russia regarding the purchase of advanced S-400 long-range air defense missile systems. The parties are studying the prospects for boosting military cooperation in all areas, including procurement deals in electronic systems, ammunitions and missile technology. The related issues were discussed during the visit of General Hulusi Akar, the head of the Turkish armed forces’ General Staff, to Moscow on November 1.

Turkey and Russia would look to establish a joint military, intelligence, and diplomatic mechanism. According to Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Isik, Turkey will do everything needed for cooperation with Russia on Syria. He said «a new page has opened» in the history of defense cooperation with Russia. The Turkish defense chief also underscored that his county «will develop close relations with Russia in the defense area based on its interests and this will not be a step against NATO or any other country»,

Russia and Turkey are on the way to implement the ambitious Turkish Stream gas project.

The progress is made against the background of worsening ties between Turkey and the US and its NATO allies. Ankara has been angered by what it sees as lukewarm condemnation by its Western allies of the abortive July 15-16 coup. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in November that he was disillusioned with the US policies in his interview with CBS 60 Minutes. Turkey’s officials have complained about NATO’s unwillingness to cooperate with Turkey.

Ankara is mulling the possibility of joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), or Shanghai Pact. Turkey is a major Eurasian power. Its integration into the Eurasian system is a logical step to make.

The relations between Russia and Iran have grown warmer since the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the Iran nuclear deal, became effective. President Vladimir Putin visited Iran last November – his first visit after 2007. There are lucrative economic projects on the bilateral agenda.

The two countries regularly discuss military planning for Syria, where Iran has provided ground forces that work with local allies while Russia provides air power. Russian warplanes have used Iranian airfields to strike terrorist targets in Syria. The militaries hold join exercises. Russia has delivered modern S-300 air defense systems to Iran.

The foreign ministers of Turkey and Iran have recently pledged greater cooperation on resolving Syria’s crisis, vowing to keep the dialogue open despite their differences. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that Iran was «ready to work and cooperate» with Turkey and Russia on the issue of Syria, adding that it welcomed «the new cooperation that has started» between Moscow and Ankara.

'“Before it was hell, now we can move forward and breathe again” ~ Mohammed, from Hanano

On the 11th December 2016 I visited Hanano in East Aleppo. Hanano had been liberated days previously by the Syrian Arab Army and allies including Hezbollah and Russia. Hanano had been under a Nusra Front [Al Qaeda] terrorist regime for the last, almost, five years.

The testimonies we filmed testified to starvation, wholesale deprivation of humanitarian aid, summary executions, torture and the use of civilians as human shields. Nusra Front were the overlord of the district, controlling an estimated 22 militant brigades funded, equipped and armed by NATO and Gulf states and condemning the Syrian civilians to a life of fear and imprisonment in their own homes.

Women were married, raped and discarded en masse, children were imprisoned and anyone caught supporting the Syrian Government could be executed or imprisoned & tortured. The very antithesis of the narrative being run by the corporate media for the entire duration of the almost five years of wholesale suffering endured by both West and East Aleppo, carved into two and targeted by the Nusra Front-led terrorists and militants.

Militants like the US funded, Nour Al Din Zinki who beheaded 12 year old Palestinian child, Abdullah Issa or US “moderates”, Ahrar Al Sham, who have carried out a number of vicious ethnic cleansing campaigns in and around Aleppo.

This video contains two of those testimonies, exposing the lie peddling, by corporate media, that has been allowed to permeate public opinion and narrowly failed to precipitate the devastating No Fly Zone that would have, undeniably, led to further bloodshed on an unimaginable scale.

At the end of filming two boys sat down in front of the camera and spontaneously chanted “Allah, Souria, ou Bashar bas”. “God, Syira, Bashar is enough”._________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

'It has just become more dangerous to be a foreign correspondent reporting on the civil war in Syria. This is because the jihadis holding power in east Aleppo were able to exclude Western journalists, who would be abducted and very likely killed if they went there, and replace them as news sources with highly partisan “local activists” who cannot escape being under jihadi control.

The foreign media has allowed – through naivety or self-interest – people who could only operate with the permission of al-Qaeda-type groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham to dominate the news agenda.

The precedent set in Aleppo means that participants in any future conflict will have an interest in deterring foreign journalists who might report objectively. By kidnapping and killing them, it is easy to create a vacuum of information that is in great demand and will, in future, be supplied by informants sympathetic to or at the mercy of the very same people (in this case the jihadi rulers of east Aleppo) who have kept out the foreign journalists. Killing or abducting the latter turns out to have been a smart move by the jihadis because it enabled them to establish substantial control of news reaching the outside world. This is bad news for any independent journalist entering their territory and threatening their monopoly of information.

There was always a glaring contradiction at the heart of the position of the international media: on the one hand it was impossibly dangerous for foreign journalists to enter opposition-held areas of Syria, but at the same time independent activists were apparently allowed to operate freely by some of the most violent and merciless movements on earth. The threat to Western reporters was very real: James Foley had been ritually beheaded on 8 August 2014 and Steven Sotloff a few days later, though long before then foreign journalists who entered insurgent-controlled zones were in great danger.

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Aleppo citizen films last message before leaving city
But the threat was just as great for a local persons living under insurgent rule who criticised their actions or ideas. This is made clear by an Amnesty International report published in July this year entitled Torture Was My Punishment. Philip Luther, director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme of Amnesty International, says that in these areas civilians “live in constant fear of being abducted if they criticise the conduct of armed groups in power or fail to abide by the strict rules some have imposed”.

Any genuinely independent journalists or activists are targeted, according to the report. Speaking of Jabhat al-Nusra (which has renamed itself Jabhat Fatah al-Sham and was formerly the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda), a 24-year-old media activist called “Issa” said “they are in control of what we can and cannot say. You either agree with their social rules and policies or you disappear.”....'_________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

'The blockade of water from Wadi Barada to 5 million people in Damascus is taking an interesting turn. The U.S. and UK financed White Helmet organization seems to be directly involved in it. This increases the suspicion that the illegal blockade of water to civilians in Damascus is part of a organized campaign under U.S. command. The campaign is designed to block utilities to government held areas as revenge for the liberation of east Aleppo.

As we described it yesterday:

After the eastern part of the city of Aleppo was liberated by Syrian government forces, the local rebels and inhabitants in the Barada river valley were willing to reconcile with the Syrian government. But the al-Qaeda Takfiris disagreed and took over. The area is since under full al-Qaeda control and thereby outside of the recent ceasefire agreement.
On December 22 the water supply to Damascus was suddenly contaminated with diesel fuel and no longer consumable. A day later Syrian government forces started an operation to regain the area and to reconstitute the water supplies.

Photos and a video on social media (since inaccessible but I saw them when they appeared) showed the water treatment facility rigged with explosives. On Dec 27th the facility was blown up and partly destroyed.

The Syrian government is ready to send repair teams to rehabilitate the water flow to the millions of civilians in Damascus. But access to the site is denied and the Syrian army is now trying to push al-Qaeda and its allies away from it.

EHSANI2 @EHSANI22 - 6:43 AM - 3 Jan 2017
Offer by opposition to trade access to water source for #Damascus with halting of military operations by army
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Here is the attachment to both tweets. Note who signed it:.......'_________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

'There is a campaign underway to destroy Syria's public utilities. Al-Qaeda, ISIS and the U.S. airforce are involved. Their action is coordinated.

That is an outrageous statement? No such coordination would ever happen? Consider:

The idea of the Islamic State was "born" in the U.S. military prison camp Bucca in Iraq. Many of its future leader were interned there and had time and space to develop their philosophy and to plan their future operations.

In 2012 the Defense Intelligence Agency warned of the rise of an Islamic State entity in Syria and Iraq:

THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME…”.

In an August 2014 NYT interview with Thomas Friedman President Obama said that the U.S. knew about the dangers of ISIS but did nothing to stop its expansion in Iraq because it could be used to oust then Prime Minister Maliki:

The reason, the president added, “that we did not just start taking a bunch of airstrikes all across Iraq as soon as ISIL came in was because that would have taken the pressure off of [Prime Minister Nuri Kamal] al-Maliki.

In a recent talk with some U.S. paid members of the Syrian opposition Secretary of State Kerry (video - 25:50) made a similar point but wuth regard to Syria:

"And we know that this was growing, we were watching, we saw that DAESH was growing in strength, and we thought Assad was threatened" Kerry told the Syrians. "(We) thought, however," he continued. "we could probably manage that Assad might then negotiate. But instead of negotiating he got Putin to support him."

There are doubts that the U.S. was only watching from afar. The beginning and growth of ISIS was financed by U.S. Gulf "allies" which are subordinated to U.S. wishes. When the Obama administration had to start bombing ISIS after it killed a U.S. journalist the few bombs its airforce dropped were hitting an "ISIS fighting position" or an "ISIS excavator". That wasn't a serious campaign. Meanwhile thousands of Turkish tanker trucks were waiting in the deserts to load oil from ISIS controlled wells to sell it to Turkey. Only after the Russian President Putin showed satellite pictures of those huge truck columns to his colleagues at a G20 meeting did the U.S. start to attack this major source of ISIS finances.

At the end of last year the U.S. military bombed a Syrian government position in Deir Ezzor where some 100,000 Syrians are besieged by ISIS. It killed more than Syrian 100 troops and enabled ISIS to take important hill positions that may eventually help it to conquer the city. This was an intentional strike.

Currently a campaign is waged by the Takfiri forces opposing the Syrian government and by the U.S. to deprive the people under its protection of all public utilities - water, gas and electricity. After the start of the current blocking of the water supplies to Damascus and its 5-6 million inhabitants we noted:

This shut down is part of a wider, seemingly coordinated strategy to deprive all government held areas of utility supplies. Two days ago the Islamic State shut down a major water intake for Aleppo from the Euphrates. High voltage electricity masts on lines feeding Damascus have been destroyed and repair teams, unlike before, denied access. Gas supplies to parts of Damascus are also cut.

This campaign against basic infrastructure has since continued. U.S. support "rebel" groups take part in it. Al-Qaeda in Syria, aka Jabhat al Nusra, does its share in Wadi Barada. The U.S. military just bombed another Syrian power station. In 2015 it had already waged a campaign against such installations creating huge material damages. Since three days Deir Ezzor and surroundings have no electricity at all. Yesterday ISIS again joined the campaign and blew up a huge gas processing facility in Hayyan in east Homs. Hayyan is the largest such station in Syria and provided electricity, heating gas and cooking gas for all of south Syria including the capital Damascus.

This is a systematic, wide ranging campaign against Syrian infrastructure designed to deprive the people living under government protection of the basic necessities.

If you would ask the U.S. government it would of course say that such a campaign does not exist and is totally not coordinated by the U.S. and its Gulf proxies. It is just coincidence that U.S. supported "rebels", al-Qaeda, ISIS and the U.S. airforce all hit the same category of targets in Syria at the very same moment of their war against the Syrian people.

In knowledge of the top U.S. sources quoted above I would be inclined to doubt such an assertion.

The campaign is in prelude to the next stage of the war for which all involved parties currently prepare. As Obama still gives the orders we can expect it to be more vicious and with even more propaganda support than his failed "defense" of his proxy forces in east-Aleppo.'

'The summary report on an investigation into US and allied air strikes on Syrian government troops has revealed irregularities in decision-making consistent with a deliberate targeting of Syrian forces.

The report, released by US Central Command on 29 November, shows that senior US Air Force officers at the Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) at al-Udeid Airbase in Qatar, who were responsible for the decision to carry out the September airstrike at Deir Ezzor:

misled the Russians about where the US intended to strike so Russia could not warn that it was targeting Syrian troops
ignored information and intelligence analysis warning that the positions to be struck were Syrian government rather than Islamic State
shifted abruptly from a deliberate targeting process to an immediate strike in violation of normal Air Force procedures

Last week Brig. Gen. Richard Coe, the lead US official on the investigating team, told reporters that US air strikes in Deir Ezzor on 17 September, which killed at least 62 – and possibly more than 100 – Syrian army troops, was the unintentional result of “human error”.

The report itself says that the investigators found “no evidence of misconduct” – but it is highly critical of the decision process and does not offer any explanations for that series of irregularities.

How the strikes killed off ceasefire deal

The strikes against two Syrian army positions were the pivotal event in the breakdown of the Syrian ceasefire agreement reached between the United States and Russia in September. Both Moscow and Damascus denounced the strikes as a deliberate move by the Obama administration to support the Islamic State group and cited the attacks as the reason for declaring an end to the ceasefire on 19 September.

Lt. Gen. Jeffrey L Harrigan, commander of US Air Forces Central Command and of the CAOC, who was the central figure in all the decisions, apparently had a motive for a strike against Syrian forces.

US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter had strongly opposed a provision in the US-Russian ceasefire agreement that would have established a US-Russian “joint integration center” to coordinate air strikes against both Islamic State (also known as Daesh) and the then-Nusra Front, which was to become active after seven days of effective ceasefire.

But President Barack Obama supported Secretary of State John Kerry’s position and overrode Pentagon objections......'_________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

by Thierry Meyssan
The war against Syria is the first to have been waged, for more than six years, in the digital era. A wealth of documents which should have remained secret for many years have already been published. Although they have been released in different countries, so that international public opinion is unaware of them, they already enable us to piece together the events concerned. The release of a recording of comments made in private by John Kerry last September reveals the policies of the Secretary of State and obliges all observers — including ourselves — to review our previous analyses.

VOLTAIRE NETWORK | DAMASCUS (SYRIA) | 17 JANUARY 2017

The broadcast by The Last Refuge of the complete recording of the meeting between Secretary of State John Kerry and the members of the National Coalition (22 September 2016, at the Dutch delegation to the United Nations) calls into question what we thought we knew about the US position on Syria.

First of all, we believed that while Washington had launched the operation known as the «Arab Spring» in order to overthrow the secular Arab régimes for the benefit of the Muslim Brotherhood, it had left its allies to assume the second war against Syria on their own, as from July 2012. Since these states pursued their own objectives — recolonisation for France and the United Kingdom, theft of gas reserves for Qatar, expansion of Wahhabism and revenge for the Lebanese civil war for Saudi Arabia, annexation of the North of the country for Turkey on the Cypriot model, etc. — the original objective had been abandoned. However, John Kerry states in this recording that Washington has never stopped seeking to overthrow the Syrian Arab Republic, which implies that it supervised the work of its allies at every stage. It follows that, over the last four years, the jihadists have been commanded, armed and coordinated by NATO Allied LandCom (ground forces command) based in Izmir (Turkey).

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Second, John Kerry confirms here that Washington could go no further because of international Law and the position of Russia. Let’s be clear about this - the United States have never ceased exceeding their rights. They have destroyed most of Syria’s oil and gas infrastructures, on the pretence of fighting the jihadists (which is allowed under international Law), but without having been invited by President el-Assad (which violates intenational Law). However, they did not dare to deploy their troops on the ground and openly fight the Republic, as they did in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq. For that job, they chose to put their allies in the front line — leadership from behind — and to support mercenary forces without discretion, as they did in Nicaragua, at the risk of being sanctioned by the International Court of Justice (UN internal tribunal). Washington does not want to engage in a war against Russia, which, although it had not opposed the destruction of Yugoslavia and Libya, stood up and drew a new line which must not be crossed. Moscow has the capacity to defend the Law by force if Washington were to openly engages in a new war of conquest.

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Third, John Kerry confirms here that Washington hoped for the victory of Daesh over the Republic. Until now — on the basis of the report by General Michael Flynn on 12 August 2012 and the article by Robin Wright in the New York Times on 28 Septembre 2013 — we had understood that the Pentagon intended to create a «Sunnistan» straddling Syria and Iraq, in order to cut the «Silk Road». However, he admits that the plan went much further than that. Probably, Daesh was to take Damascus, and then be chased out by Tel-Aviv (in other words, they would be pushed back to the «Sunnistan» which had been allotted to them). Syria would then be shared between Israel in the South, Daesh in the East, and Turkey in the North.

This point enables us to understand why Washington gave the impression of no longer being able to control events, of giving its allies «free rein» — indeed, it engaged France and the United Kingdom in the war by leading them to believe that they would be able to recolonise the Levant, while in fact it had planned to divide Syria without them.

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Fourth, by admitting that Washington «supported» Daesh, John Kerry recognises that it armed them, which destroys the rhetoric of the «war on terror».
- Since the attack against the al-Askari mosque in Samarra, on 22 February 2006, we knew that Daesh (originally known as the «Islamic Emirate of Iraq») had been created by the national director of US Intelligence, John Negroponte, and Colonel James Steele — on the model they had used in Honduras — in order to put an end to the Iraqi Resistance and to spark a civil war.
- We knew, since the publication by the PKK daily, Özgür Gündem, of the minutes of the planning meeting held in Amman on 1 June 2014, that the United States had organised the joint offensive of Daesh on Mosul and the Kurdistan Regional Government on Kirkuk.
- We now know with certainty that Washington has never stopped supporting Daesh.

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Fifth, we had interpreted the conflict between the Allen/Clinton/Feltman/Petraeus clan on one hand, and the Obama/Kerry administration on the other, as being concerned with the question of whether or not to support Daesh. This interpretation was wrong. Both sides had no qualms about organising and supporting the most fanatical of jihadists. Their disagreement concerned only the recourse to open warfare — and the risk of potential conflict with Russia — or the choice of secret action. Only Flynn — Donald Trump’s current security advisor — is opposed to jihadism.

If, in a few years, the United States should collapse as the USSR did, this recording of John Kerry could be used against him, and against Barack Obama, before an international court — but not before the International Criminal Court, which today is discredited. Having recognised the extracts of this conversation which have been published by the New York Times, he would no longer be able to contest the authenticity of the whole dossier. The support that Kerry offers to Daesh violates several UN resolutions and constitutes proof of his responsibility and that of Obama in the crimes against humanity committed by the terrorist organisation.

'.......I call my country, the country I love and I have grown up in to stop condemning the population of Syria remotely and to stop encouraging terrorist groups who already target our families, our children, our citizens, and this no matter the economic or geopolitical goals at hand. We cannot side with or support armed forces who hope to lead a revolution to go back to an age of ignorance.

Mr President, with all my heart, I call and beg France, which values I have grown up with and make me continue my action here everyday, to lift sanctions against Syria. They harm the population, not the government. I beg France to start finding alternative diplomatic solutions to this war, solutions that would represent peace for the Syrian people burt also for us, French people, who risk being the target of backfires as an entity supporting armed forces who spread terror and violence, and whose ambitions are clearly international....'

I have sent this to the French Embassy, Le Canard Enchaine and Le Monde Diplomatique - Canard Enchaine is probably the best bet._________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

A report, by former senior CIA official Graham Fuller, said the US should consider 'urging Iraq to take the war to Syria', noting that Saddam was 'fighting for his life' in the Iran-Iraq campaign.

Through the closure of the pipeline, Mr Fuller said Syria had a 'hammerlock' on US interests in both Lebanon and in the Gulf.

With that being the case, he said the US should consider 'sharply escalating the pressures against Assad' from three border states hostile to Syria - Iraq, Israel and Turkey.

Faced with 'three belligerent fronts', Assad would probably be forced to abandon his closure of the pipeline, the report claimed.

It hoped it could convince Iraq to co-operate as the closure of the pipeline had brought the country 'to its financial knees', impelling it towards dangerous internationalization of the war in the Gulf.

It noted that Iraq might not 'readily wish' another campaign but said Syria was already fighting a one-front war in Lebanon and could 'ill-afford to broaden' its conflict.

It also said Syria was struggling to keep control over a population that detested the Assad regime.

It went on to say Iraq had enough military airpower to devote up to one half of its air force against Syria.

By demanding the reopening of the pipeline, Iraq would have the support of 'virtually every Arab state, except Libya', the report said.

The report added that if the US wanted to 'rein in Syria' it needed to do so by showing 'real muscle' and highlighted the need to strike a 'sharp blow' to Syria's prestige.

Elsewhere, the report stated that Israel should 'welcome the chance to humble Assad' by raising tensions among Syria's Lebanon front without actually going to war. It said Assad was now Israel's greatest problem, not Iraq.

Lastly, it said that Turkey, angered by Syrian support to Armenian terrorism, to Iraqi Kurds and to Turkish terrorists operating out of northern Syria, had often considered launching unilateral military operations against terrorist camps in northern Syria.

It said the use of all three states was essential to enacting change and forcing Assad to back down.

Bringing in Iraq, it said, was the most challenging aspect of the plan.

To do so could only be done by a 'reorientation of US policy towards Iraq' and might include 'more active US participation in supplying high-tech items' to Iraq's modernization efforts.

It concluded by saying that the US might need to give more support to Iraq in the war against Iran.

The Iraq-Iran war started on September 22, 1980 and did not end for eight years.

Saddam had invaded because of a territorial dispute over the Shatt al-Arab, the waterway which formed the boundary between the two countries.

He also felt threatened by the Islamic revolution which had brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power in Iran the year before.

But they viewed Saddam as a brutal tyrant and he underestimated their devotion to their new leader.

The war finally ended with a UN-brokered ceasefire which was accepted by both sides.'

On the 12th December 2016, I entered the Old City of East Aleppo, less than 18 hours after its final liberation from Nusra Front terrorist, and Nour al Din Zenki, extremist, occupation. The smog that enveloped the dishevelled, battle scarred, buildings of this ancient, Aleppo City, lent an eerie aspect to the devastation that greeted us as we picked our way through the debris of the last battles for the freedom of this, UNESCO World Heritage Site, city....'_________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

James files is the Mafia hitman who fired the fatal shot from his Remington Fireball that blew president John F. Kennedy's brains out._________________--
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.comhttp://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."

When President Donald Trump took to the White House in January 2017, such calls were once again made to "resist" the new president and all the perceived evils he represented.

However, so confused and detached from reality are these calls, that no such resistance has even the remotest possibility of improving America's plight, with a much more likely possibility of actually making that plight worse.

The Deep State: From Whence Real Power Flows

According to Wikipedia, the deep state is described as:
...a political situation in a country when an internal organ ("deep state"), such as the armed forces and civilian authorities (intelligence agencies, police, administrative agencies and branches of governmental bureaucracy), does not respond to the civilian political leadership.
And the reality is, within every nation exists a deep state of one sort or another. Excluded from Wikipedia's definition are "internal organs" comprised of corporate-financier interests with unwarranted wealth and influence on scales that likewise allow them to "not respond to the civilian political leadership," or even directly and fully control that civilian political leadership altogether.

Beyond mere conspiracy theories, leaked e-mails made available by Wikileaks from 2008 - one month before President Barack Obama won the 2008 election - reveal how Citibank's Michael Froman provided a list to John Podesta laying out virtually the entire cabinet of the soon-to-be president.

The New Republic's October 2016 article, "The Most Important WikiLeaks Revelation Isn’t About Hillary Clinton," would report (emphasis added):
The cabinet list ended up being almost entirely on the money. It correctly identified Eric Holder for the Justice Department, Janet Napolitano for Homeland Security, Robert Gates for Defense, Rahm Emanuel for chief of staff, Peter Orszag for the Office of Management and Budget, Arne Duncan for Education, Eric Shinseki for Veterans Affairs, Kathleen Sebelius for Health and Human Services, Melody Barnes for the Domestic Policy Council, and more. For the Treasury, three possibilities were on the list: Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Timothy Geithner.

This was October 6. The election was November 4. And yet Froman, an executive at Citigroup, which would ultimately become the recipient of the largest bailout from the federal government during the financial crisis, had mapped out virtually the entire Obama cabinet, a month before votes were counted. And according to the Froman/Podesta emails, lists were floating around even before that.
Citibank's parent company, Citigroup, reported annual net profits for 2016 at around 15 billion US dollars. This is enough money to provide 1 million dollars in bribes to every member of the US Congress, in both the Senate and House of Representatives, and still maintain the vast majority of its wealth. And Citigroup is just one of many immense, corporate-financier monopolies not only cohabitating upon Wall Street, but cohabitating upon the boards of directors and sponsorship lists of America and Europe's most influential policy think tanks.

Prominent US policy think tanks include but are not limited to:
The Brookings Institution
RAND Corporation
The Heritage Foundation
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Council on Foreign Relations
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Center for American Progress
Crisis Group
Freedom House
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
The Atlantic Council
Think tanks are forums within which unelected corporate-financier funded policymakers devise and promote policy on behalf of their benefactors. They represent the collective interests of multiple multi-billion dollar multinational corporations, banks, and other institutions. They often have ties directly to corporate-media platforms, with corporate-media figures either included within think tank boards of directors, or their media platforms servings as corporate sponsors, or often, both.

Policy is not only devised and promoted from within think tanks and by media platforms associated with them, but this policy inevitably ends up in the hands of corporate lobbyists, who in turn, place it in the hands of both US legislators and staff in the White House itself.

While many Americans may envision the US President bent over a desk, penning US policy in the Oval Office at night, in reality, US policy is merely rubber stamped by presidents and congress members - many times having not even read the bills and policies they are signing off on.

This is the very definition of a deep state that not only ignores civilian political leadership, but exercises absolute control over that leadership's selection and administration.

Fighting the Deep State

Realizing then, that is it not "Obama" or "Trump" that we are actually protesting, or even conservatives or liberals, but the deep state and the corporate-financier special interests that constitute it regardless of who occupies the White House, Congress, or any side of any given mainstream debate, it becomes clear that protests against "Trump" and other politicians or parties we disdain are beyond futile.

They are able to wield such power and influence because of the immense, unchecked wealth they hold as well as their control over the very necessities modern civilizations requires to function. They hold this wealth, in turn, because they are uncontested monopolies in their respective industries to which hundreds of millions of people around the globe pay their paychecks to each and every month.

Imagine global wealth and influence represented by a game board. The US-European Fortune 500 have nearly covered the entire board with their pieces, with very few exceptions being competing circles of special interests in Russia and across Asia, particularly in China.

To truly fight the deep state, it is imperative to remove their pieces from the board and replace them with pieces of our own.

How Organic is Pushing Big-Ag Off the Board

While many people believe revolution involves burning cities, unfurling flags, and joining huge mobs of rebels and protesters, the reality is that positive change only comes from patient hard work, incrementally removing unjust, domineering edifices from society, and replacing them with better, localized, and more equitable structures.

There is perhaps no better example of this than the organic agricultural movement.

Resulting from a backlash against massive global-spanning and insidiously unjust chemical and genetically-modified agricultural monopolies like Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, DuPont, Dow, and Bayer, the modern organic food revolution is predicated on local grassroots networks spanning the world, consisting of millions of people - both producers and consumers, media platforms educating and informing the public, farmers' markets, organic farms and collectives, local retailers, as well as processing companies producing value-added products and more.

Village by village, town by town, city by city, and country by country, organic agriculture has spread for a variety of reasons.

First - the direct socioeconomic benefit it brings those who are engaged in growing and selling. Instead of one massive corporation concentrating profits from around the globe into the hands of a board of directors and their corporation's shareholders, organic agriculture - through local entrepreneurship - distributes those profits more evenly, directly to the people growing, processing, and selling the food.

Second are the health benefits, not just for consumers eating cleaner food, but also for the farmers growing it spared the hazardous effects of chemicals used in big-ag farming. Additionally, the environment is spared pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers, as well as genetic pollution associated with big-ag farming.

And finally, there is the positive macro-economic impact of localized organic farming - involving a more distributed and localized agricultural system that can better prepare for and protect itself from market fluctuations, natural disasters, and other factors that have an immense and devastating impact on farmers trapped within big-ag monoculture.

The organic food industry has been steadily growing, taking a larger and larger percentage of the market away from big-ag each year. In other words, taking big-ag's pieces off the game board, and replacing them with organic agriculture's pieces.

And as the organic food movement grows, it becomes easier in many places for individuals and groups of people to enter into the market - further eroding big-ag's position on the board.

Big-ag has attempted to strike back through policymakers it controls, its army of lobbyists, and influence over the media to attack, undermine, and even outlaw aspects of the organic industry to reassert itself. However, it is in vain. Those entering into the organic industry outnumber those invested in big-ag a million to one - and are entering into organic agriculture out of passion and self-preservation, not profits alone.

A similar tale has unfolded due to information technology empowering individuals with the ability to compete with establishment media monopolies. The alternative media has slowly replaced the game pieces of big-media monopolies, wiping out some entirely, and pushing others into corners where they now desperately fight to retain credibility, profitability, and audiences.

Taking on the Rest of the Deep State

In order to replicate this success across all other industries and aspects of modern human civilization the deep state currently dominates, the same sort of incremental building-up of our own institutions, businesses, networks, and paradigms is required.

Image: The Game Board of global geopolitical, socioeconomic power.

As technology advances, it will empower people on a much more local level to directly compete with the biggest and most powerful monopolies on Earth. Solar power and advances in battery technology will allow larger numbers of people to make either personal or local power grids independently of both state and corporate energy monopolies.

Manufacturing technology is increasingly making it possible to manufacture locally, short-circuiting corporate-financier dominated, global-spanning supply chains and all aspects they encompass. It also allows for a larger number of players to enter into and compete in industries that have for over a century been dominated by immense, centralized monopolies every where from big-auto to aerospace corporations, and big-retail.

Crytocurrencies and blockchain technology is making it possible for people to develop their own independent monetary instruments, circumventing centrally controlled banks, financiers, and state monetary systems.

While some of these solutions are just finding their way onto the game board, dwarfed by those of existing monopolies, the incremental, patient, but persistent organic agriculture movement as well as the alternative media are case studies proving that it is not only possible, but likely inevitable. As technology makes it easier for us to take a share of the market and the benefits that come with it for ourselves, we will - and at the expense of existing monopolies.

Still Not Convinced?

For those still not convinced - imagine this scenarios:
Americans take to the streets, protesting against President Trump and his policies, burning down their own cities, brutalizing their neighbors, fighting with police resulting in arrests and injuries on all sides - only to end up going home and changing exactly nothing.
Because when they go home, they continue paying into the very system they were just out protesting - by shopping at Walmart, filling up their big-auto cars with big-oil gasoline, drinking Starbucks, pecking away at the screens of their slave-made Apple iPads, fueling the actual source of social injustice - the concentration of wealth in the hands of corporate-financier monopolies - that gestated a politician like Trump and all those that inhabit his administration.
Compared with this second scenario:
Americans begin working locally, starting and supporting local businesses, organizing themselves to create local institutions that carry out the affairs of their community that government and large corporations refuse to address.

In 4-8 years, a level of self-sufficiency will exist in such communities, cutting off both the government they despise and the corporations that created and influence it from the money, time, attention, and energy of millions of people. These resources, kept locally, would be used to move the country forward directly as the people - not Wall Street and Washington - sees fit.
And because no "revolution" of fire, blood, and bullets took place, the government would atrophy and shrink where it was unwelcomed by the people, and survive and continue to function where it was needed - and where it still functioned, people who now hold leverage in their local communities with their own two hands, could demand and receive the administration that suited them - not special interests - best.
In the end, there would not be lawless mayhem, but a government brought back into balance, brought back because of the leverage the people empowered themselves with locally through constructive activism, entrepreneurship, local institutions, and decentralized networks.
Americans must realize by now, having protested the war in Iraq in 2003 only to be completely ignored and have the war rage for now 16 years under both a Republican and Democrat president, and having protested almost continuously since President Trump's election in 2016, that protests alone accomplish nothing.

Without leverage, the special interests that dominate American politics have absolutely no reason to listen. By cutting these interests off from the very source of their strength - and channeling that strength instead into local movements like organic agriculture, alternative energy, local manufacturing, alternative media and entertainment, and alternative currencies - we empower ourselves with overwhelming leverage - not only to exact our demands from our elected officials, but to implement policy locally without conferring with or receiving "approval" from Washington in the first place.

For those who delude themselves into believing they can replicate the success of "revolutions" like the 2011 "non-violent" "Arab Spring," they need to consider the above equation of real power, then reexamine the "Arab Spring" to see whether or not that was truly a grassroots "revolution," or simply foreign-backed regime change fueled by billions of dollars from US-European special interests through a variety of channels - including very violent subversion.

They're ham actors, as well as mercennary US/NATO proxies and war-mongering propagandists. Slowly but surely, more and more people are waking up to the truth._________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

February 9, 2017 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - Amnesty International's 48 page report titled, "Syria: Human Slaughterhouse: Mass Hangings and Extermination at Saydnaya Prison, Syria," boasts bold claims, concluding:
...the Syrian authorities’ violations at Saydnaya amount to crimes against humanity. Amnesty International urgently calls for an independent and impartial investigation into crimes committed at Saydnaya.
However, even at a cursory glance, before even reading the full body of the report, under a section titled, "Methodology," Amnesty International admits it has no physical evidence whatsoever to substantiate what are admittedly only the testimony of alleged inmates and former workers at the prison, as well as figures within Syria's opposition.

Image: What you are looking at is a 3D model fabricated entirely in the United Kingdom, based solely on satellite pictures and hearsay. Passed off as evidence this technique of "forensic architecture" may soon become a new tool in the dissemination of war propaganda if it is not exposed.

Within the section titled, "Methodology," the report admits:
Despite repeated requests by Amnesty International for access to Syria, and specifically for access to detention facilities operated by the Syrian authorities, Amnesty International has been barred by the Syrian authorities from carrying out research in the country and consequently has not had access to areas controlled by the Syrian government since the crisis began in 2011. Other independent human rights monitoring groups have faced similar obstacles.
In other words, Amnesty International had no access whatsoever to the prison, nor did any of the witnesses it allegedly interview provide relevant evidence taken from or near the prison.

The only photographs of the prison are taken from outer space via satellite imagery. The only other photos included in the report are of three men who allege they lost weight while imprisoned and a photo of one of eight alleged death certificates provided to family members of detainees who died at Saydnaya.

Articles like, "Hearsay Extrapolated - Amnesty Claims Mass Executions In Syria, Provides Zero Proof," provide a detailed examination of Amnesty's "statistics," while articles like, "Amnesty International “Human Slaughterhouse” Report Lacks Evidence, Credibility, Reeks Of State Department Propaganda," cover the politically-motivated nature of both Amnesty International and the timing of the report's promotion across the Western media.

However, there is another aspect of the report that remains unexplored - the fact that Amnesty International itself has openly admitted that the summation of the report was fabricated in the United Kingdom at Amnesty International's office, using a process they call "forensic architecture," in which the lack of actual, physical, photographic, and video evidence, is replaced by 3D animations and sound effects created by designers hired by Amnesty International.

Amnesty Hired Special Effects Experts to Fabricate "Evidence"

In a video produced by Amnesty International accompanying their report, titled, "Inside Saydnaya: Syria's Torture Prison," the narrator admits in its opening seconds that Amnesty International possesses no actual evidence regarding the prison.

The video admits:
There are almost no pictures of its exterior [except satellite images] and none from inside. And what happens within its walls is cloaked in secrecy, until now.
Viewers are initially led to believe evidence has emerged, exposing what took place within the prison's walls, but the narrator continues by explaining:
We've devised a unique way of revealing what life is like inside a torture prison. And we've done it by talking to people who were there and have survived its horrors...

...and using their recollections and the testimony of others, we've build an interactive 3D model which can take you for the first time inside Saydnaya.
The narrator then explains:
In a unique collaboration, Amnesty International has teamed up with "Forensic Architecture" of Goldsmiths, University of London, to reconstruct both the sound and architecture of Saydnaya prison, and to do it using cutting-edge digital technology to create a model.
In other words, the summation of Amnesty International's presentation was not accumulated from facts and evidence collected in Syria, but instead fabricated entirely in London using 3D models, animations, and audio software, based on the admittedly baseless accounts of alleged witnesses who claim to have been in or otherwise associated with the prison.

Eyal Weizman, director of "Forensic Architecture," would admit that "memory" alone was the basis of both his collaboration with Amnesty International, and thus, the basis for Amnesty's 48 page report:
Memory is the only resource within which we can start [to] reconstruct what has taken place. What does it feel like to be a prisoner in Saydnaya?
Weizman's organization, "Forensic Architecture," on its own website, describes its activities:
Forensic Architecture is a research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London. It includes a team of architects, scholars, filmmakers, designers, lawyers and scientists to undertake research that gathers and presents spatial analysis in legal and political forums.

We provide evidence for international prosecution teams, political organisations, NGOs, and the United Nations in various processes worldwide. Additionally, the agency undertakes historical and theoretical examinations of the history and present status of forensic practices in articulating notions of public truth.
In other words, special effects experts and their tools - usually employed in the creation of fictional movies for the entertainment industry or for architectural firms to propose yet-to-exist projects - are now being employed to fabricate evidence in a political context when none in reality exists.

While the work of "Forensic Architecture" may be of interest to developing theories, it is by no means useful in providing actual evidence - evidence being understood as an actual available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid - not a fabricated body of supposed facts or information.

Image: Technology used for creating Hollywood dinosaurs and aliens, or an architectural proposal for a vacant lot, is now being used to fabricate evidence for politically motivated reports when no actual evidence exists.
The work of "Forensic Architecture" and the witness accounts gathered by Amnesty International - all of which were admittedly gathered outside of Syria - would form the basis of an initial inquiry, not a final report nor the basis of a conclusion that human rights violations not only took place, but that they constituted crimes against humanity and demanded immediate international recourse.

Amnesty International's report lacked any actual evidence, with its presentation consisting instead of admittedly fabricated images, sounds, maps, and diagrams. Amnesty - lacking actual evidence - instead abused its reputation and the techniques of classical deception to target and manipulate audiences emotionally. What Amnesty International is engaged in is not "human rights advocacy," but rather politically-motivated war propaganda simply hiding behind such advocacy.

A report from Amnesty International citing testimony from a handful of rebels and other opposition figures, and claiming a large number of hangings carried out by the Syrian government at a single prison has been quickly accepted by media outlets, and in many cases far overstated, despite a lack of really concrete proof it ever happened.

The report’s figures are based on claims of executions of between 20 and 50 people executed in a week, extrapolated into a 4+ year figure which put between 5,000 and 13,000 people over that period, “assuming the rate remained the same,” an assumption for which they don’t provide any real evidence, since the testimonies are all for very limited periods of time.

This broad 5,000 to 13,000 death toll was not only endorsed by outlets like the Associated Press, but overstated, with the AP taking that fairly wide range, and reporting “at least 13,000” as the death toll, despite it being the absolute maximum in the Amnesty range.

Brandon Turbeville - Activist Post - Wed, 08 Feb 2017 17:43 UTC
In yet another act of "convenient" timing, Amnesty International has released a bombshell report alleging the execution by hanging of 13,000 Syrian prisoners by the Syrian government from 2011-2015. The report, "Human Slaughterhouse: Mass Hangings And Extermination At Saydnaya Prison, Syria," which contains rather detailed descriptions of torture, rape, and execution as well as other horrific activity has no doubt caught the attention of many people, even those who have followed the events transpiring in Syria for the last six years. However, there is one important aspect of the report that Amnesty International lacks . . . evidence.

While the report, at first glance, might sound convincing, an adequate reading of the text reveals it to be yet another Western propaganda piece designed to demonize the Assad government shortly before important talks take place in Switzerland. The report contains the right buzzwords such as "extermination campaign" and reads like a story recounting Nazi concentration camps so as to jog the ever-present memory of the Holocaust, thus causing the reader to subconsciously and consciously associate the Nazi slaughter of the Jews with the alleged Assad execution of 13,000 prisoners. Still, while we must give credit to good writing, we must point out that good writing with no evidence is just a piece of fiction.

Below are a number of reasons to question the report and, as a result, another list of reasons to question the integrity of Amnesty International.

The Timing Of The Report

The report has been released conveniently two weeks before talks are set to begin in Switzerland between the Syrian government and the so-called opposition. This is no accident. Already, suit-wearing terrorists are crying that the Syria Peace talks scheduled in two weeks must address the report and the accusations. This "convenient" timing brings to mind the now infamous "Caesar" report produced and paraded around Western media as fact but which, in reality, was nothing more than Qatari-sponsored propaganda.

The Numbers

First, it is important to take a look at the numbers cited by Amnesty International. While the Western media is doing its best to raise the numbers even higher, citing "at least 13,000," we shall examine the 13,000 claims themselves.

In fact, the numbers are not 13,000, they are somewhere between 5,000 and 13,000, a variance of 8,000. Indeed, while 5,000 alone might seem like a large number, a margin of error that is larger than half of the highest estimate is highly questionable.

It is also important to point out that these numbers are merely an estimate. Take a look at the "Executive Summary," where the report states,
From December 2015 to December 2016, Amnesty International researched the patterns, sequence and scale of violations carried out at Saydnaya Military Prison (Saydnaya). In the course of this investigation, the organization interviewed 31 men who were detained at Saydnaya, four prison officials or guards who previously worked at Saydnaya, three former Syrian judges, three doctors who worked at Tishreen Military Hospital, four Syrian lawyers, 17 international and national experts on detention in Syria and 22 family members of people who were or still are detained at Saydnaya.
...
On the basis of evidence from people who worked within the prison authorities at Saydnaya and witness testimony from detainees, Amnesty International estimates that between 5,000 and 13,000 people were extrajudicially executed at Saydnaya between September 2011 and December 2015.
So where are these numbers coming from? First, the "raw data" is coming from two witnesses total. Even the "raw data" is an estimate from the alleged "witnesses." Even the extrapolation from that "raw data" is itself an estimate. Look at how the report explains the mechanism for determining how many people have been killed:
People who worked within the prison authorities at Saydnaya told Amnesty International that extrajudicial executions related to the crisis in Syria first began in September 2011. Since that time, the frequency with which they have been carried out has varied and increased. For the first four months, it was usual for between seven and 20 people to be executed every 10-15 days. For the following 11 months, between 20 and 50 people were executed once a week, usually on Monday nights. For the subsequent six months, groups of between 20 and 50 people were executed once or twice a week, usually on Monday and/or Wednesday nights. Witness testimony from detainees suggests that the executions were conducted at a similar - or even higher - rate at least until December 2015. Assuming that the death rate remained the same as the preceding period, Amnesty International estimates that between 5,000 and 13,000 people were extrajudicially executed at Saydnaya between September 2011 and December 2015.
. . . . .
These estimates were based on the following calculations. If between seven and 20 were killed every 10-15 days from September to December 2011, the total figure would be between 56 people and 240 people for that period. If between 20 and 50 were killed every week between January and November 2012, the total figure would be between 880 and 2,200 for that period. If between 20 and 50 people were killed in 222 execution sessions (assuming the executions were carried out twice a week twice a month and once a week once a month) between December 2012 and December 2015, the total figure would be between 4,400 and 11,100 for that period. These calculations produce a minimum figure of 5,336, rounded down to the nearest thousand as 5,000, and 13,540, rounded down to the nearest thousand as 13,000.
Notice the variances of the numbers (between x and y) as well as the language demonstrating lack of anything concrete; i.e. "suggests," "once or twice a week," and "assuming."

In another section of the report, it states,
Former detainees from the red building at Saydnaya provided Amnesty International with the names of 59 individuals who they witnessed being taken from their cells in the afternoon, being told that they were being transferred to civilian prisons in Syria. The evidence contained in this report strongly suggests that in fact, these individuals were extrajudicially executed.
. . . . .
Former prison guards and a former prison official from Saydnaya also provided Amnesty International with the names of 36 detainees who had been extrajudicially executed in Saydnaya since 2011.

These 95 individuals are the only ones Amnesty is able to name. So with the report down from 13,000 to 95, it should be pointed out that the ability to name does not equal proof of execution. Even with all its "witnesses," there was very little evidence about these individuals (only 1-2% of the total numbers claimed by the report) having been allegedly executed.
Indeed, in its section "Documented Deaths," Amnesty is forced to admit that the numbers of deaths cannot be proven but the organization still attempts to pad their numbers with deaths which are not from execution. The report states,
the exact number of deaths in Saydnaya is impossible to specify. However, the Syrian Network for Human Rights has verified and shared with Amnesty International the names of 375 individuals who have died in Saydnaya as a result of torture and other ill-treatment between March 2011 and October 2016. Of these, 317 were civilians at the time of their arrest, 39 were members of the Syrian military and 19 were members of non-state armed groups. In the course of the research for this report, Amnesty International obtained the names of 36 additional individuals who died as a result of torture and other ill-treatment in Saydnaya. These names were provided to Amnesty International by former detainees who witnessed the deaths in their cells.
Notice also the source of much of the information - the Syrian Network For Human Rights.

The Sources Of The Report

So who are these alleged "witnesses" and sources behind the report to begin with? For starters, very few interviews were actually conducted in Syria and those that were, were conducted remotely by Skype or telephone. Some were conducted in Lebanon, Jordan, Europe, and the United States. Most, however, were conducted in southern Turkey, the home base of ISIS and related terrorist factions being facilitated by Erdogan's government and funneled into Syria. Interestingly enough, since Amnesty International has wisely been barred from entering Syria by the government, the organization admits that it does not have access to government-held territory, hinting that it very well might have access to terrorist-held areas.

The report states that,
Given that Amnesty International has been barred by the Syrian authorities from entering the country and has consequently not had access to government-controlled areas since 2011, the majority of these interviews were carried out in southern Turkey, the majority of these interviews took place in person in southern Turkey. The remaining interviews were conducted by telephone or through other remote means with interviewees still in Syria, or with individuals based in Lebanon, Jordan, European countries and the USA.
The report mentions how it came to find the individuals it interviewed for the report. It states that it was put in contact with the relevant alleged "victims" or former "perpetrators" by various international NGOs like "Urnammu for Justice and Human Rights, the Syrian Network for Human Rights, and the Syrian Institute for Justice and Accountability," all organizations that have profoundly misrepresented the facts on the ground, the opinions and voices of the Syrian people, and who have supported terrorists by acting as ISIS, al-Qaeda, FSA, etc. propaganda organs.

Syrian Network For Human Rights (SNHR) is a notoriously shady organization which many believe to be associated with British Intelligence. As Moon of Alabama writes,
SNHR is known for rather ridiculous claims about casualties caused by various sides of the conflict. It is not know what SNHR qualifies as civilians - do these include armed civil militia? But note that none of the mostly civilians SNHR claims to have died in the prison are said to have been executed. How is it possible that a organization frequently quoted in the media as detailed source of casualties in Syria has no record of the 5,000 to 13,000 Amnesty claims were executed?
Good question.

One last time, it is imperative that we point out that the Amnesty International report is based on interviews conducted with individuals all over the world who claim to have been victims and perpetrators who are mostly outside of Syria or located in terrorist havens. These individuals were recommended to Amnesty International via three NGOs who are notoriously biased, anti-Assad, pro-terrorist, and potentially wings of intelligence operations. Nowhere in the report is there any attempt to provide a different view or contrary opinion. All information is represented as fact. Sound legit? Not to me.

The "Witness" Testimony Is Not Convincing

In Moon of Alabama's analysis, some important criticism is leveled at the accuracy of the "witness" testimony. The website writes,
I will not go into the details of witness statements on which the report is build. They seem at least exaggerated and are not verifiable at all. In the end it is pure hearsay on which Amnesty sets it conclusions. One example from page 25:

"Hamid", a former military officer when he was arrested in 2012, recalled the sounds he heard at night during an execution:

"There was a sound of something being pulled out - like a piece of wood, I'm not sure - and then you would hear the sound of them being strangled... If you put your ears on the floor, you could hear the sound of a kind of gurgling. This would last around 10 minutes... We were sleeping on top of the sound of people choking to death. This was normal for me then."

A court might accept 'sound of "I'm not sure" "kind of gurgling" noise through concrete' as proof that a shower was running somewhere. But as proof of executions?

Of all the witnesses Amnesty says it interviewed only two, a former prison official and a former judge, who describe actual executions (page 25). From the wording of their statements it is unclear if they have witnessed any hangings themselves or just describe something they have been told of.
Amnesty Maligns The Grand Mufti and Tries To Represent A Sectarian Syria

The military court procedures described in the report have one glaringly ridiculous flaw that should stand out immediately to anyone who has even a passing understanding of Syrian society and culture. The report attempts to claim that the Grand Mufti of Syria, Sheikh Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, is involved in the approval of orders to execute prisoners. On page 19 it says that "The judgement is sent by military post to the Grand Mufti of Syria and to either the Minister of Defence or the Chief of Staff of the Army, who are deputized to sign for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and who specify the date of the execution."

Yet the report seems to forget two things. First, the Grand Mufti is a well-known moderate who has repeatedly called for peace throughout the conflict. In fact, the position of Grand Mufti is civil only and only pronounces judgement in matters related to certain members of the Sunni faith, similar (although not identical) to a Bishop in the Catholic religion. It would be vastly out of character and vastly contradictory for the Grand Mufti to take part in such activities. It would also be out of character for the Syrian government to consult a Grand Mufti or any religious leader in regards to its war policy. After all, hasn't Western media portrayed Assad as a sectarian Alawite? So why is he deferring to the Sunni Grand Mufti?

Regardless, the report misses one glaringly obvious fact: Syria is a secular society. Perhaps Amnesty International's "experts" are ignorant or perhaps they simply believe the Western public is so gullible that such details do not matter but, unlike prehistoric states like Saudi Arabia, Syria is a government of civil law, not the religious. Another possibility is that Amnesty's witnesses, so closely aligned with the "opposition," are unaware of how secular societies work, being so used to having religious authorities governing every aspect of life, that they unwittingly included jihadist culture into their depiction of Syrian policy. We might never know the answer but we do know that the representation of Syrian culture provided by Amnesty is inaccurate to say the least.

The Satellite Images

Another source provoking questions about the veracity of the report are the satellite images purportedly showing mass graves near South Damascus. But the images clearly do not show mass graves. They show an expansion of a cemetery, exactly what one would expect in a cemetery near a major city in a country that has experienced such horrific warfare. These photos are grasping at straws to say the least.

The Nature Of Amnesty International

In his excellent article, "Amnesty International Is US State Department Propaganda," Tony Cartalucci reveals the nature of Amnesty's funding, which comes from both Western governments, international foundations and color revolution operations such as the infamous George Soros' Open Society. Cartalucci writes,
That Amnesty is supporting the US State Department's agenda should be no surprise, it is run literally by the US State Department's Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organizations, Suzanne Nossel.
. . . . . .
Mistakenly considered by many as the final word on human rights worldwide, it might surprise people to know that Amnesty International is in fact one of the greatest obstacles to real human rights advocacy on Earth. In its most recent 2012 annual report (page 4, .pdf), Amnesty reiterates one of the biggest lies it routinely tells:

"Amnesty International is funded mainly by its membership and public donations. No funds are sought or accepted from governments for investigating and campaigning against human rights abuses. Amnesty International is independent of any government, political ideology, economic interest or religion."

This is categorically false. Amnesty international is indeed funded and run by not only governments, but also immense corporate-financier interests, and is not only absolutely entwined with political ideology and economic interests, it is an essential tool used for perpetuating just such interests.
. . . . .
Finding financial information on Amnesty International's website is made purposefully difficult - specifically to protect the myth that the organization is "independent." Like any organized criminal operation, Amnesty separates compromising financial ties through a series of legal maneuvers and shell organizations. Upon Amnesty's website it states:

"The work carried out through Amnesty International's International Secretariat is organised into two legal entities, in compliance with United Kingdom law. These are Amnesty International Limited ("AIL") and Amnesty International Charity Limited ("AICL"). Amnesty International Limited undertakes charitable activities on behalf of Amnesty International Charity Limited, a registered charity."

And it is there, at Amnesty International Limited, where ties to both governments and corporate-financier interests are kept. On page 11 of Amnesty International Limited's 2011 Report and Financial Statement (.pdf) it states (emphasis added):

"The Directors are pleased to acknowledge the support of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Oak Foundation, Open Society Georgia Foundation, the Vanguard Charitable Endowment Programme, Mauro Tunes and American Jewish World Service. The UK Department for International Development (Governance and Transparency Fund) continued to fund a four year human rights education project in Africa. The European Commission (EuropeAid) generously awarded a multi-year grant towards Amnesty International's human rights education work in Europe."

Clearly then, Amnesty does take money from both governments and corporate-financier interests, one of the most notorious of which, Open Society, is headed by convicted financial criminal George Soros. In March, 2012, it was reported that a Bloomberg's report, "Soros Loses Case Against French Insider-Trading Conviction," indicated that an appeal based on a "human rights" violation against Wall Street speculator George Soros had been rejected by the "European Court of Human Rights."

Soros, whose Open Society also funds Human Rights Watch and a myriad of other "human rights" advocates, literally attempted to use the West's human rights racket to defend himself against charges of financial fraud in perhaps the most transparent illustration of just how this racket operates.

Soros, who was convicted and fined for insider trading in 2002 regarding French bank Société Générale shares he bought in 1988, has built an empire out of obfuscating global criminal activity with the cause of "human rights." His support, as well as that of the British and European governments, of Amnesty International aims solely at expanding this obfuscating.
Cartalucci also reveals the nature of the AI "leadership." He writes,
Amnesty's leadership is also telling of its true agenda. Suzanne Nossel, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, for instance was drawn directly from the US State Department- again, utterly contradicting Amnesty's claims of being "independent" of governments and corporate interests. Nossel continued promoting US foreign policy, but simply behind a podium with a new logo, Amnesty International's logo, attached to it. Amnesty International's website specifically mentions Nossel's role behind US State Department-backed UN resolutions regarding Iran, Syria, Libya, and Cote d'Ivoire.
. . . . .
A glance at AmnestyUSA.org reveals that each and every front the US State Department is currently working on and has prioritized is also coincidentally prioritized by Amnesty International. This includes rallies and campaigns to support US State Department-funded Russian opposition groups (currently fixated on "Pussy Riot"), undermining the Syrian government, toppling the government of Belarus, and supporting the Wall Street-London created Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar (still called by its British Imperial nomenclature of "Burma" by Suu Kyi herself).
Conclusion

The Amnesty International report is, at best, a faulty and poorly produced distortion of some disturbing reports from dubious sources, exaggerated for the purposes of demonizing Assad and the Syrian government. It simply cannot be believed and has no credibility whatsoever. The lack of understanding of Syrian culture, the straws being grasped when it comes to the satellite photos, dubious NGO influence, terrorist-linked sources, and lack of credible "witnesses" as well as the fact that virtually "evidence" being produced rests on these incredible "witnesses" all serve the purpose of destroying AI's own propaganda before it can even get off the ground.

Amnesty International may now officially join the ranks of Human Rights Watch in the running for which NGO and "human rights" organization can produce the most ridiculous yet effective propaganda against the Syrian government.

The West’s vast propaganda machine has pulled in many formerly respectable groups, such as Amnesty International, which just released a dubious “human rights” report aimed at stoking the war in Syria, reports Rick Sterling.

By Rick Sterling

Amnesty International (AI) has done some good investigations and reports over the years, which has won the group widespread support. However, less well recognized, Amnesty International has also carried out faulty investigations with bloody and disastrous consequences.

U.S.-backed Syrian “moderate” rebels smile as they prepare to behead a 12-year-old boy (left), whose severed head is held aloft triumphantly in a later part of the video. [Screenshot from the YouTube video]
One prominent example is in Iraq, where AI “corroborated” the false story that Iraqi soldiers were stealing incubators from Kuwait, leaving babies to die on the cold floor. The deception was planned and carried out in Washington to influence the U.S. public and Congress.
A more recent example is from 2011 where false accusations were being made about Libya and Muammar Gaddafi as Western and Gulf powers sought to overthrow his government. AI leaders joined the campaign claiming that Gaddafi was using “mercenaries” to threaten and kill peacefully protesting civilians. The propaganda was successful in muting criticism of what became an invasion and “regime change.”

Going far beyond a United Nations Security Council resolution to “protect civilians,” NATO launched sustained air attacks and toppled the Libyan government leading to chaos, violence and a flood of refugees. AI later refuted the “mercenary” accusations but the damage was done.

Now, on Feb. 7, Amnesty International released a new report titled “Human Slaughterhouse: Mass Hangings and Extermination at Saydnaya Prison,” which accuses the Syrian government of executing thousands of political prisoners, a set of accusations that has received uncritical treatment in the mainstream news media.

Like the Iraq/Kuwait incubator story and the Libyan “mercenary” story, the “Human Slaughterhouse” report is coming at a critical time. It accuses and convicts the Syrian government of horrible atrocities against civilians – and AI explicitly calls for the international community to take “action.” But the AI report is deeply biased and amounts to a kangaroo-court conviction of the Syrian government.

AI’s Standards Ignored

The Amnesty International report violates the organization’s own research standards. As documented by Professor Tim Hayward here, the Secretary General of Amnesty International, Salil Shetty, claims that Amnesty does its research “in a very systematic, primary, way where we collect evidence with our own staff on the ground. And every aspect of our data collection is based on corroboration and cross-checking from all parties, even if there are, you know, many parties in any situation because of all of the issues we deal with are quite contested. So it’s very important to get different points of view and constantly cross check and verify the facts.”

A heart-rending propaganda image designed to justify a major U.S. military operation inside Syria against the Syrian military.
But the Amnesty report fails on all counts: it relies on third parties, it did not gather its information from different points of view, and it did not cross-check with all parties. The report’s conclusions are not based on primary sources, material evidence or AI’s own staff; the findings are solely based on the claims of anonymous individuals, mostly in southern Turkey from where the war on Syria is coordinated.

Amnesty gathered witnesses and testimonies from only one side of the conflict: the Western- and Gulf-supported opposition. For example, AI consulted with the Syrian Network for Human Rights, which is known to seek NATO intervention in Syria. AI “liased” with the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, an organization funded by the West to press criminal charges against the Syrian leadership. These are obviously not neutral, independent or nonpartisan organizations.

If AI were doing what its Secretary General claims the organization always does, AI would have consulted with organizations within or outside Syria to hear different accounts of life at Saydnaya Prison. Since the AI report has been released, the AngryArab has published the account of a Syrian dissident, Nizar Nayyouf, who was imprisoned at Saydnaya. He contradicts many statements in the Amnesty International report, the type of cross-checking that AI failed to do for this important study.

Amnesty’s accusation that executions were “extrajudicial” is exaggerated or false. By Amnesty’s own description, each prisoner appeared briefly before a judge and each execution was authorized by a high government leader. We do not know if the judge looked at documentation or other information regarding each prisoner. One could argue that the process as described was superficial, but it’s clear that even if AI’s allegations are true, there was some kind of judicial process.

Amnesty’s suggestion that all Saydnaya prisoners are convicted is false. Amnesty quotes one witness who says about the court: “The judge will ask the name of the detainee and whether he committed the crime. Whether the answer is yes or no, he will be convicted.” But this assertion is contradicted by a former Saydnaya prisoner who is now a refugee in Sweden. In this news report, the former prisoner says the judge “asked him how many soldiers he had killed. When he said none, the judge spared him.” This is evidence that there is a judicial process of some sort and there are acquittals.

The Amnesty report includes satellite photographs with captions which are meaningless or erroneous. For example, as pointed out by Syrian dissident Nizar Nayyouf, the photo on page 30 showing a Martyrs Cemetery is “silly beyond silly.” The photo and caption show that the cemetery doubled in size. However, this does not prove hangings of prisoners who would never be buried in a “martyrs cemetery” reserved for Syrian army soldiers. On the contrary, it confirms the fact which Amnesty International otherwise ignores: Syrian soldiers have died in large numbers.

The Amnesty report falsely claims — based on data provided by one of the groups seeking NATO intervention — “The victims are overwhelmingly ordinary civilians who are thought to oppose the government.” While it’s surely true that innocent civilians are sometimes wrongly arrested, as happens in all countries, the suggestion that Saydnaya prison is filled with 95 percent “ordinary civilians” is preposterous. Amnesty International can only make this claim without facing ridicule because AI and other Western organizations have effectively “disappeared” the reality of Syria.

Missing Facts

Other essential facts, which are completely missing from the Amnesty report, include:

King Salman of Saudi Arabia and his entourage arrive to greet President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Jan. 27, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
–Western powers and Gulf monarchies have spent billions of dollars annually since 2011 to recruit, fund, train, arm and support with sophisticated propaganda a violent campaign to overthrow the Syrian government;

–As part of this operation, tens of thousands of foreign fanatics have invaded Syria and tens of thousands of Syrians have been radicalized and paid by Wahhabi monarchies in the Gulf to overthrow the government;

–More than 100,000 Syrian Army and National Defense soldiers have been killed defending their country. Most of this is public information yet ignored by Amnesty International and other mainstream media in the West. This “regime change” operation has been accompanied by a massive distortion and cover-up of reality.

–Without providing evidence, Amnesty International accuses the highest Sunni religious leader in Syria, Grand Mufti Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, of authorizing the execution of “ordinary civilians.” While the Grand Mufti is a personal victim of the war’s violence – his son was murdered by terrorists near Aleppo – he has consistently called for reconciliation. Following the assassination of his son, Grand Mufti Hassoun gave an eloquent speech expressing forgiveness for the murderers and calling for an end to the violence.

What does it say about Amnesty International that it makes specific personal accusations, against people who have personally suffered, yet provides no evidence of guilt?

In the report, Amnesty uses sensational and emotional accusations in place of factual evidence. The title of the report is “Human Slaughterhouse.” And what goes with a “slaughterhouse”? A “meat fridge.” So, the report uses the expression “meat fridge” seven separate times, presumably in an attempt to strengthen the central metaphor of a slaughterhouse.

Even the report’s opening quotation is hyperbolic: “Saydnaya is the end of life – the end of humanity.” The report is in sharp contrast with fact-based objective research and investigation; it appears designed to manipulate emotions and thus create new public support in the West for another escalation of the war.

Yet, Amnesty International’s accusations that the Syrian government is carrying out a policy of “extermination” are contradicted by the fact that the vast majority of Syrians prefer to live in government-controlled areas. When the “rebels” were finally driven out of East Aleppo in December 2016, 90 percent of civilians rushed into areas under government control.

In recent days, civilians from Latakia province who had been imprisoned by terrorists for the past three years have been liberated in a prisoner exchange. [This video shows Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his wife meeting with some of the civilians.]

A Video

The Amnesty report is accompanied by a three-minute propaganda cartoon that reinforces the narrative that Syrian civilians who protest peacefully are imprisoned and executed. Echoing the theme of the report, the animation is titled “Saydnaya Prison: Human Slaughterhouse.” Amnesty International appears to be in denial that there are tens of thousands of violent extremists in Syria, setting off car bombs, launching mortars and otherwise attacking civilian areas every day.

Journalist James Foley shortly before he was executed by an Islamic State operative in August 2014 somewhere in Syria.
Given the national crisis – with so many violent jihadists to confront – it makes little sense that Syrian security or prison authorities would waste resources on non-violent civilians although that does not mean that the Syrian government has clean hands either. Mistakes and abuses surely happen in this war like all wars.

But the AI report is more like the propaganda that has surrounded the Syrian conflict from the beginning, lacking in balance and reminiscent of the “perception management” used to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the West’s assault on Libya in 2011. AI’s hyperbole is also contradicted by the fact that Syria has many opposition parties that compete for seats in the National Assembly and campaign openly for public support from both the right and left of the Baath Party.

AI’s claim that Syrian authorities brutally repress peaceful protests further ignores the Syrian reconciliation process. For the past several years, armed opposition militants have been encouraged to lay down their weapons and peacefully rejoin society, a program largely unreported in Western media because it contradicts the “black hat” narrative of the Syrian government. [A recent example is reported here.]

The Amnesty report cites the “Caesar” photographs as supporting evidence for its “slaughterhouse” accusations but ignores the fact that nearly half those photographs show the opposite of what was claimed. The widely publicized “Caesar photographs” was a Qatari-funded hoax designed to sabotage the 2014 Geneva negotiations as documented here.

While the Amnesty report makes many accusations against the Syrian government, AI ignores the violation of Syrian sovereignty being committed by Western and Gulf countries. It is a curious fact that big NGOs such as Amnesty International focus on violations of “human rights law” and “humanitarian law” but ignore the crime of aggression, also called the crime against peace.

According to the Nuremberg Tribunal, aggression is “the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” Former Nicaraguan Foreign Minister and former President of the U.N. General Assembly, Father Miguel D’Escoto, is someone who should know. He says, “What the U.S. government is doing in Syria is tantamount to a war of aggression, which, according to the Nuremberg Tribunal, is the worst possible crime a State can commit against another State.” Amnesty International ignores this reality.

Background and Context

The co-author of this Amnesty International report is Nicolette Waldman (Boehland), who was uncritically interviewed on DemocracyNow on Feb. 9. The background and previous work of Waldman shows the inter-connections between influential Washington “think tanks” and the billionaires’ foundations that fund “non-governmental organizations” – NGOs – that claim to be independent but are clearly not.

Waldman previously worked for the “Center for Civilians in Conflict,” which is directed by leaders from George Soros’s Open Society, the Soros-funded Human Rights Watch, Blackrock Solutions and the Center for a New American Security (CNAS).

Billionaire currency speculator George Soros. (Photo credit: georgesoros.com)
CNAS may be the most significant indication of political orientation since it is led by Michele Flournoy, who was expected to become Secretary of Defense if Hillary Clinton had won the election. CNAS has been a leading force behind neoconservative and liberal-interventionist plans to escalate the war in Syria. While past work or associations do not always define new or future work, in this case the sensational and dubious accusations seem to align with those political goals. [Soros’s Open Society has also provided funds to Amnesty International.]

So what to make of Amnesty International’s new report? The once widely respected human rights organization has, in the recent past, let itself be used as a propaganda tool to justify Western aggression against Iraq and Libya, which seems to be the role that AI is playing now in Syria.

The Amnesty International report is a mix of hearsay accusations and sensationalism that tracks with the Western propaganda themes that have surrounded the Syrian war from the start. Because of Amnesty’s undeserved reputation for independence and accuracy, the report has been picked up and broadcast widely. Liberal and supposedly progressive media outlets have joined in dutifully echoing the questionable accusations.

Little or no skepticism is applied when the target is the Syrian government, which has faced years of foreign-sponsored aggression. If this report justifies another escalation of the conflict, as Amnesty International seems to want, the group will again be serving as a rationalizer for Western aggression against Syria, just like it did in Iraq and Libya.

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Amnesty International are now claiming that the Grand Mufti of Syria, Sheikh Badreddine Hassoun of all people (met him in person, lovely human being), signed off on up to 13,540 secret executions in Sednaya prison in Damascus (p. 17).

The report, titled ‘Human Slaughterhouse’, claims to have interviewed (p. 5):
– 31 men who were detained at Saydnaya
– 4 prison officials or guards who previously worked at Saydnaya
– 3 former Syrian judges
– 3 doctors who worked at Tishreen Military Hospital
– 4 Syrian lawyers
– 17 international and national experts on detention in Syria
– 22 family members of people who were or still are detained at Saydnaya

Of those 84 people they claim to have interviewed, 81 are anonymous, and only 3 come with names (p. 34).

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Assuming these prisoners are being executed in complete secrecy as per the report’s claims, to the point where alleged doctors, judges and prison guards can’t provide any evidence that these prisoners even exist aside from their own testimony, how would the family members of these prisoners know they’re being held at Sednaya?

The report also alleges (p. 2 that there are secret mass graves in Damascus, only to finish up by saying, “not having access to Syria, Amnesty International has been unable to independently verify these statements”. Really, Amnesty? You couldn’t get your alleged sources, especially the prison guards, to take one photo?

The second time they use the key-word ‘verify’ or ‘verified’ in their report is in a very short section titled ‘Documented Deaths’ (p. 40) which doesn’t even refer to work they’ve done, but to allegedly verified deaths in Sednaya prison according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights which claims that 375 prisoners died of torture from March 2011 to October 2016.

ALSO READ Russian aid arrives to help needy civilians in Aleppo city
But hang on, if SNHR knows enough about what happens inside Sednaya to the point where they know for certain that 375 prisoners died of “torture and other ill-treatment”, and assuming therefore that they’re capable of monitoring the transfer of prisoners to Sednaya in the first place, how on earth did they manage to miss up to 13,165 executed prisoners?

Amnesty International claims to have “obtained the names of 36 additional individuals who died as a result of torture and other ill-treatment in Saydnaya” which were “provided to Amnesty International by former detainees who witnessed the deaths in their cells”. So in other words, the people that AI either met or called told them 36 names with no evidence backing up their claims, and yet we’re supposed to believe them when they claim over 13K secret executions?

Finally, why would ‘international and national experts’ need to remain anonymous? If they really were experts they’d have literature to their name so we can check their credentials. Nope, anonymous.

'Damascus has reacted harshly to the bombing of Kurdish militias in northern Syria on Thursday morning by Turkey’s air force, vowing to intervene next time Ankara sends its planes over its border.

In a statement, the Syrian Defense Ministry accused Turkey of “flagrant aggression, which targeted innocent citizens,” saying that it considers it “a dangerous development that could escalate the situation.”

“Any attempt to once again breach Syrian airspace by Turkish war planes will be dealt with and they will be brought down by all means available,” warned Damascus, whose planes, which have flown in concert with a Russian expeditionary force, have been avoiding direct confrontation with unauthorized NATO jets.

Turkish artillery guns have been firing at Kurdish militias, who are now fighting against Ankara-backed rebels over territory won back from Islamic State in northern Turkey on Wednesday. Turkey said that the airstrikes took out up to 200 Kurds, though the YPG, the Kurdish militia, initially put its losses at 15.

Syria called the victims “150 innocent civilians” and said that “these irresponsible acts will have dire consequences that will threaten the region's stability and security.”

The US, Turkey’s NATO ally, has meanwhile distanced itself from the airstrikes, with State Department spokesperson John Kirby tweeting on Thursday that “contrary to some reports, US was not involved in Turkey airstrikes last night.”

Kirby added that US “called on all parties on the ground to avoid uncoordinated movements,” adding that they “only benefit” Islamic State terrorists.

Turkish aerial incursions into Syria have grown more frequent, as fighting has intensified around Aleppo, with at least four factions vying to take control of northern Syria, all with their own agendas.....'_________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

BEIRUT, LEBANON (9:57 P.M.) – Israel’s ambassador to Russia has been called in by the Russian Foreign Ministry on Friday to provide clarification on Israel’s air force attack in Syria overnight, a statement by Moscow said, which was also confirmed by Israeli Foreign Ministry according to Haaretz.

The air raid resulted in one Israeli jet being destroyed by Syrian missile defenses according to the Syrian Army’s General Command, as reported earlier today by Al-Masdar News.

It is rare that Israel is called by Moscow to explain its actions in Syria. However, this time, Israel struck positions near Palmyra where Russian forces are embedded with both Hezbollah and the Syrian Army, who are all fighting against ISIS.

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Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in a statement said that Israel will not allow Hezbollah to acquire advance weaponry.

“When we identify attempts to transfer advanced arms to Hezbollah, and we have intelligence information and we have the operational plan, we act to prevent it,” Netanyahu said. “That’s what happened and that’s what will happen.”

However, a Syrian Army officer denied that Hezbollah were even targeted in Palmyra, and rather only minor damage to defences were made._________________--
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.comhttp://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."

'This week is the 6th anniversary of the beginning of the Syrian conflict. Despite the mounting evidence and the collapse of Washington and London’s failed project, many liberal ‘humanitarian interventionists’ in the West are still clinging to the imaginary storyline of ‘freedom fighters’ in Syria battling against an evil authoritarian tyrant in their fragile bid to preserve their dream of a progressive liberal democratic future in the Middle East. A fairy tale for the ages…

From the beginning of hostilities in 2011, the US, UK, France, the EU, Turkey, Jordan, Israel and the Gulf monarchies, led by Saudi Arabia and Qatar – have all been pumping the fraudulent narrative of a ‘Syrian Revolution’, which was meant to be the latest peaceful installment of the fabled ‘Arab Spring.’ This ornate lie has been refined and recycled across all US mainstream, European and Gulf media outlets for the last 6 years, custom designed to give the false impression that “Assad is a brutal dictator” – and justifying the Western and Gulf-backing of religious extremist militants, followed by a protracted US-led ‘Coalition’ bombing campaign in Syria (all of which have been illegal under international law, and, US law for that matter).

In truth, US-led plans to overthrown the Syrian government and reshape the country along sectarian lines goes way back…

First, we have the 1986 documented US policy plan for regime change in Damascus, which was later followed by a series of events continuing in 2003 when Liz Cheney (daughter of Bush VP Dick Cheney) then head of Near East affairs at the US State Department) launched the dubious ‘Middle East Partnership Initiative‘ (MEPI) to the tune of $100 million, and in 2004 when Washington launched ‘Radio Free Syria,’ run by a Washington-based NGO front called the Reform Party of Syria (RPS) and ‘Syrian Democratic Coalition’, run by a US-based Syria dissident, Farid N. Ghadry, financed by US State Department. In his own words, “Radio Free Syria will help us unite and consolidate the reformers inside Syria with the reformers pressuring the regime from the outside.” [1] According to Sourcewatch: “Ghadry’s crew, all US-based dissidents and united back then under the umbrella organization the ‘Syrian Democratic Coalition’ (SDC), discussed with officials from the vice president’s office, the Pentagon and the National Security Council, how the “regime in Damascus could be weakened” and how to “prove criminal conduct by Syrian officials”. After the talks, Ghadry, who was pushing for the US president to lean on Damascus personally, summed it up by saying that the call for democracy in Syria “is being taken very seriously at the highest level of the Bush administration”. He was going to “work closely with the US administration and the EU” from his end so that ‘Syria’s oppressive Baath-regime’ could be toppled. However, Ghadry, who was closely cooperating with Abdelnour, disappeared from the scene after he lied to the European Parliament and was dispossessed by his own party for “dubious conduct”.[18] .....'_________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

'.... U.S. Special Forces and Syrian Kurdish and Arab fighters have just captured a "strategic air base" from Islamic State in northern Syria; in doing so, they have also "blocked" the advance of the Syrian Army as it approaches Raqqa from the west:

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced on Sunday that they captured the Tabqa air base, 45km west of Raqqa, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group's de facto capital in Syria.

Earlier this week, US forces airlifted SDF fighters behind ISIL lines to allow them to launch the Tabqa assault, and on Friday the alliance reached one of the dam's entrances.

SDF forces were within 10km of Raqqa from the north, and aimed to effectively surround the city before launching an assault.

But as RFE/RL quietly notes:

Besides recapturing the dam, SDF said the U.S.-backed operation also aimed to block any advance by Syrian government forces from the west.

The landing forces airdropped into Syria seized four small villages in the area west of Tabqa and cut a main highway that links the provinces of Raqqa, Deir al-Zor, and Aleppo, Scrocca said.

The SDF cut the last main road out of Raqqa earlier this month, narrowing in on the city from the north, east, and west.

The only way in or out of Raqqa now is over the Euphrates River that borders the city to the south.

Incredible, isn't it? A foreign army that is illegally operating in a sovereign nation can just march in and cut off the legitimate army of said sovereign nation from liberating its own city from terrorists.....'_________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

' According to the documents at our disposal, the U.S. authorities and the Syrian Kurds reached an agreement past week on the boundaries of the Kurdish autonomy in the territory of Syria, which had been guaranteed to Kurds in case of capturing Raqqa and Al-Tabqah (34 miles to the West of Raqqa). This confirms the reports about the U.S. plans to divide Syria.

In addition, Washington has already defined the boundaries of the new state of the Great Kurdistan on the territory of Syria and Iraq. It is to be created after ISIS defeat and the final collapse of Syrian Arab Republic. According to the U.S. military, Kurds remain the only force capable of defeating ISIS.

In order to strengthen its positions the new U.S. administration announced the upcoming liberation of the so-called ISIS capital, Raqqa. To grease the wheels the Americans resorted to money, their weapon of choice. They bribe ISIS field commanders and increase payments to YPG and FSA units.
The U.S. government intends to capture Raqqa by April and to eliminate ISIS in Syria and Iraq this summer. The implementation of these plans requires making concessions to Kurds. This is why the U.S. promises them an independent state in case of victory.'_________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

'My opinion, together with that of many other observers, is that the green light for this offensive and for the simultaneous offensive Al-Qaeda launched in eastern Damascus, came from Turkish President Erdogan, who has been struggling to achieve some gains for Turkey in Syria to justify his intervention in that country.

The fact that Turkish backed Jihadi groups were involved in both the Damascus and the Hama offensives to my mind all but confirms this fact, though in fairness to Erdogan these groups are difficult to control. However the fact that Erdogan and the Turkish authorities failed to call on these Turkish backed Jihadi groups to observe the ceasefire and desist from joining these offensives to my mind all but confirms that at the very least he gave the green light to them.

In the event the failure of these offensives has – as I discussed previously – left the Jihadis and Erdogan in an even weaker position than they were before.

The fact that Erdogan has now formally announced the end of Operation Euphrates Shield, and that US Secretary of Tillerson has announced during a visit to Turkey that Syrian President Assad’s fate will be decided by the Syrian people and not by the US and its allies, both look as if they might be the result of this.

If so then the Jihadi offensives in Damascus and Hama may have been the last desperate throw of the ‘regime change’ coalition which has been driving the Syrian war since the conflict in Syria began in 2011.

In that case the fact the demand for ‘regime change’ is being dropped following these defeats would mark the first occasion since the USSR’s collapse in 1991 when a NATO backed ‘regime change’ war – albeit one which in this case has been fought covertly – has been defeated, both diplomatically and on the battlefield.'

Let's hope Duran is right; Erdogan is a bit of a slimey snake (but he could never, inhis wildest dreams, be more slimey than the CIA, who still control very powerful (Gladio) forces in Turkey. Erdogan has, to his credit, and to his self preservation moves, hit the Gladio forces hard.

Que sera._________________'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.

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